just because she's on a mission...

Chapter 6

Even spies had to do laundry.

Dottie and Peggy found themselves in the laundry room at the same time often enough that it became a late-night routine of sorts; putting on their washing, putting their clothes in the dryer, slipping upstairs for some of the peculiar sex they seemed to find working for them, and then coming back downstairs to retrieve their laundry and toss it into the dumbwaiter and send it up to their floor.

Jarvis had tried to impress upon Peggy from almost the very beginning that it was important that she lean on other people, that she let a few people in.  Even Steve had needed her, he pointed out.  And he was right.

Dottie was not the type that Peggy would have expected to find herself leaning on.  In truth, she knew it was a cheap, incomplete sort of leaning; Peggy found herself frequently surprised by Dottie, and was of two minds about whether she liked that or not.  Peggy prided herself on sizing up a person quickly, and didn't entirely enjoy having her perceptions miss the mark.  On the other hand, it was something of a relief to think that perhaps there was more substance to Dottie than a waifish, naive woman-child; she clung to the hope that there was enough depth to this pretty, athletic, leggy blonde that she could cobble together a relationship underneath all the weird but indisputably hot sex.

And so, she'd go off to work at the SSR, march home exhausted and searching for reasons not to feel defeated.  If their schedules matched up, which they often did, Peggy would pick Dottie up at the dance studio and they'd get dinner at the Automat together, Peggy devilishly wrecking Dottie's careful diet by dropping fries on her plate.   It was a necessity, since neither was a particularly gifted cook.  Or, more accurately, Peggy had a knack for causing meals to burst into flames, and Dottie was skilled in the preparation of Midwestern "cuisine" that involved canned mushroom soups, crushed-up chips, and other things that Peggy couldn't bear to eat after a few heroic attempts. 

It wasn't exactly romantic, but it was something.  It was a bubble of near-normalcy in the midst of a hateful job, a side-mission that tore open old wounds, and the overwhelming sense that something terrible was bearing down on her and the world that she wasn't going to be able to stop.  It was steadying in its regularity, and even the strangeness of the sex became familiar and comforting.  Once in a while, if they'd had a bit to drink, Dottie would do something unexpected, asserting a dominance or a level of risk that was a notch or two up from their usual.  Peggy had surprised herself by finding she rather enjoyed being bent over the edge of the dryer with Dottie taking her from behind, and she found that watching Dottie bring herself off afterward was satisfying enough. She continued to wish that she could give Dottie pleasure the same way that Dottie did for her, and she'd have liked it better if they would stay the night in each other's bed once in a while, but it was enough.  It worked.

In fact, as things progressed, Dottie was more willing to allow limited participation from her; a careful hand on her stomach, a little more kissing.  It still seemed that she most enjoyed Peggy's talking; Peggy knew that Dottie enjoyed her accent (it was the first thing she'd remarked on when they met), and figured out pretty quickly what Dottie liked to hear, which was that she was the best, she was in control, that Peggy was her girl, willing and ready to do whatever Dottie wanted.  Dottie didn't need to be told she was beautiful, didn't need to hear that her body was gorgeous or that the sounds she made were like music.  She wanted to hear that she was in charge, that Peggy wanted her so badly she'd do anything she was asked. 

Even so odd a thing as this, if continued long enough, inevitably evolved into caring, at least for Peggy. 

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Dottie continued to act like the girl who'd just fallen off the turnip truck, but she could tell Peggy didn't entirely buy it, and in fact seemed to want her to be more than that.  And Dottie wanted to give her that, reasoning that she needed to hold her interest to keep her close and maintain her access. So she'd occasionally admit to having read something like Crime and Punishment, concocting some story about how her high school dance teacher Madam Zaslavskaya had refused to teach her until she'd read some Dostoevsky.